


Transitions

by MikeDiamond



Category: Witchblade (TV)
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-12
Updated: 2003-11-12
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3138746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeDiamond/pseuds/MikeDiamond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is about what led Kenneth Irons to be the kind of man that he turned out to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transitions

**Transitions**

Story copyright 2002

Michael R. Diamond

Kenneth Irons copyright

Top Cow, TNT, Warner Brothers, et al.

Glumph, quish, thruck, was the sound his boots made sinking into foot-deep mud and fighting forward in the direction of the forward trenches.

What was once beautiful farmland was now a hellish swamp of water-filled shell-holes and the wreckage of war machines from both sides after four years of stalemate. Tens of thousands of people had died here. An order of magnitude more were mangled for life over this useless piece of ground. And after all this time, all the death and destruction, these trenches still sat where they were when they were first dug in 1914.

The boy was startled to see a tree trunk as they were struggling to the relative safety of the trenches. Speed was impossible even though they had been sternly warned about artillery and that speed was essential for survival.

How could a tree trunk still exist in this, he thought, if it really were that bad.

It cant be, he thought as he grunted with exertion, sweat soaking through his clothes to match the rain falling steadily from the low, gray clouds. If it were, it would not still be here after all these years. No, they were just trying to scare the kids, he thought scornfully, just to get a laugh. Well, I will show them. My classmates and I will be the best warriors in the whole German Army. Yes, I will make them eat their words.

As he struggled forward, still about one hundred meters from the trenches, he passed closer to the tree trunk and curiosity overcame him. I wonder what kind of tree it was? He thought. He got ever closer to the tree, pushing through the mud. He froze, his heart stopping for an instant, as realization struck him like a sledgehammer. It was no tree trunk at all, it was the lower torso of a soldier just like him, hips down, top missing, blown off. The rest of the body remained still upright in the deep mud of the battlefield like an obscene banner.

His pallor became very green, and his stomach became irresistibly queasy and he retched more ugliness onto the war-torn mud of France.

Then, the background shellfire became louder, intruding into his awareness.

"Schnell!" A voice shouted from the trenches.

"Mach schnell! Run now!" He tried to run, the mud gripping his boots like a million invisible hands trying to drag him bodily into hell. The more he tried to run the slower he seemed to be going, slipping, falling to his knees, getting up with an effort.

Panic overcame him. He thought of the tree trunk torso he had just passed. I do not want to end up like that!

His classmates behind him ran in their own private hells, also fighting their way to the safety of the trenches now less than one hundred meters away. I must make it! I will not die before I even arrive, I will not! He thought or did he yell? He continued to fight his way forward through the muck towards the safety of the trenches.

"Get down, now!!!" from the trenches. He fell awkwardly forward, face-first into the mud.

Thump, crump, whoosh, BOOM! Artillery shells crashed into the mud as he felt the pressure waves of hot air from the concussion of the explosions pummeling his whole body. He now crawled forward on his stomach, his goal becoming ever so slowly closer.

* * *

He became aware of the noise first, but it was all black. That confused him. Then he slowly realized that he had mud and water in his nose and mouth. He was not breathing!  His lungs were bursting. I must get up! Turn my head to the side so I can breathe. But his arms and legs would not move - Panic struck - I must get up! He forced his mind to concentrate on his unwilling extremities in a supreme act of will. He knew it was now or never. Get up!!!

Slowly, drunkenly, he got his face above the water, his head turned to the right. Coughing, spitting out mud and water -  finally  taking in air, grateful to be alive. His whole body was sore, lungs still hurting from the effects of the abuse on them from the near-drowning.

"Hurry! Before they renew the shelling!" Came a voice from the trenches. "Hurry, now!!!" He forced his exhausted body to move with a strong-willed determination that he would not have believed possible just an hour before.

As he got closer, soldiers from the trenches came and helped drag/carry them over to the cover of the trenches.

"Hurry, or youll bring more artillery down on us!" Finally, after an eternity, they climbed and fell into the muddy trenches. He squatted in the puddle at the bottom of the trench, out of breath, and tried to regain his composure.

"Whos in charge here?" He struggled to his feet, managing to attain an impeccable attention stance with a supreme act of will. "I am, sir!" He heard snickering in the background, but he was too disciplined to turn and look, or acknowledge it in any way.

"Who are you, and what in Gods name possessed you to come here in daylight, and in such a tight group?" The officer asked incredulously.

"We are recruits from the Furstenzell Jungen Kriegsakademie, and we were ordered to arrive at this time, and to stay close for mutual protection." The boy said.

The officer was shocked, and obviously horrified by something, which somewhat confused the boy. "What total, complete idiot told you to do that?" The officer exclaimed. The snickering had long since stopped for some reason. "My headmaster, Colonel Wolfgang Mueller, sir!" The boy said, still confused, and a little insulted for his headmaster.

Then he remembered something. "Sir, would it be possible for the twenty-two of us to be left together as a unit?"

It was the officers turn to be confused. "Twenty-two?"

"Yes. Twenty-two, sir."

"No. Four." His voice held a grim finality that startled the boy.

"Four, sir?" A feeling of dread overcame him  it had to be a mistake. It had to, he thought.

"Look around, cadet. I see only four." Up to that point, he had not had a chance to look around since he got there. He was still rattled by the shelling.

He looked around him and could see only three of his classmates standing there. He looked up and down the trench, but saw only himself, his three remaining classmates, and the soldiers that were already there.

"Where are the other eighteen, sir?" The other soldiers avoided his gaze. He knew, but he refused to acknowledge it. The officer matter-of-factly gestured with his thumb in the direction they had just come from. "Still out there." He said.

The boy immediately jumped up on the fire step and looked out where he had been just moments before, forgetting even discipline in his concern. 

"We must get the-" A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down hard.

"You are going to attract snipers! You want to be suicidal, fine. Just dont get us killed too!" The hand steadied him on his feet.

"Keep your head down!" The voice continued more kindly. "Besides, they are beyond anybodys help now."

Now, the full import of the disaster hit home  he could not ignore it any longer. Most of his classmates, who had been his friends and neighbors all of his life, eighteen out of twenty-two, were dead. He began to think back to better times, with friends that he would not - ever - see again.

"Why did your headmaster send you here in such a hurry?" The officer said shaking him from his reverie, suspicion in his voice.

"I do not know, sir. He did not give us a reason, only that it was urgent that we get here as soon as possible." Stunned, and in shock, he didn't let the question confuse him as much as it should have.

The officer looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "Very well - Sergeant show them their billets and where the mess is!"

"Yes, sir."

The sergeant turned to the four survivors. "Follow me and keep your heads down!"

Some time later, the four were just getting over their initial shock and had finished eating what passed for food when the sergeant came up to them.

"Follow me. One of the officers wants to talk to everybody." They followed him around the corner of the trench. They came to where a larger group of soldiers were leaning, sitting, or lounging in a group near where the officer whom they had talked to earlier stood.

Upon seeing the officer, the four immediately snapped to attention, attracting more snickering. "At ease!" The officer said immediately.

"You dont have to do that here,  just relax and listen." He tried to appear as nonchalant and relaxed as everybody else, but did not quite succeed. He finally just sat on the fire step, feeling somewhat silly.

The officer looked at the boy for a second then over the group as a whole before beginning to speak.

"I have reason to believe that the Tommy's are going to try an offensive soon. I need some volunteers to go through No Mans Land to see any activity in their trenches..." He looked around at the faces, studiously avoiding the newcomers.

The boy raised his hand. "We will go, sir!" The other three added their enthusiastic approval. They had agreed earlier that they would avenge their eighteen comrades at the earliest opportunity.

The officer put out his hand, stopping them. "I'm not asking anybody to take stupid chances. Just go partway across until you can see their trenches fairly clearly, note the activity there, if any, and go home, safe and sound. See?"

He looked desperately at the other soldiers. "Anybody?"

They all avoided his gaze. The officer took a deep breath, looked heavenward for a brief second, then let his breath out slowly before looking down to where the four boys still had their hands raised.

"Very well." He said resignedly.

* * *

"Stay low, be quiet, and if you see a Tommy patrol, just get invisible and stay that way until they are gone. Go about half way - you really dont need to get any closer. If an offensive is going to happen soon, it should be obvious. If its quiet, then report same. If somebody shoots off a flare, get down into a shell-hole or something and wait it out. If they don't see anything they won't waste them, but they will occasionally shoot them at random intervals during the night just to see what we are doing. Just be careful and patient. Keep low, keep quiet, be patient and most importantly don't do anything stupid with that!" The Sergeant said, gesturing to his rifle.

"Any questions?"

All four boys shook their heads. "Nein."

The Sergeant looked at them doubtfully, thinking that the last instruction would be the first to get ignored.

Now fully dark, they waited as a Tommy flare fell to the ground and went out.

Then- "Go! Over the top! Good luck!" The Sergeant whispered. "Well be waiting for you!"

The mud was just as bad on this side of the trenches as on the other. Slogging forward, they went from shell-hole to shell-hole, staying low and quiet. It was slow going - the holes were full of water, and once one of them fell in, getting out was very difficult because of the soft mud.

They had gotten about halfway, the British lines appearing dead quiet. He was just about to signal the other three to turn back when he felt a touch on the arm, and one of the boys whispered: "Look over there!" He said, pointing.

"A crashed British plane! Lets go look!"

"No. We should get back."

"Come on - dont tell me you aren't curious. Wasn't your brother a pilot?"

"Fighter Pilot." He corrected, tempted, but trying to hold on to discipline. He had always been curious about what his brother had fought and died in. Eventually, curiosity won.

"Well, just for a minute  we need to get back."

As they got closer, they could see the aircraft was nose down into a shell-hole, tail high in the air. The left wheel was torn off, the lower left wing torn back partially, the upper wing twisted with the violence of the crash landing. They went up to the plane and could see the corpses in the cockpit. The rear gunner was slumped into the fuselage, shot full of holes by some German fighter. They could see the pilot had been wounded in the leg, but had managed to crash land here in No Mans Land only to have had the bad luck to smash his skull on the metal tube of the Aldis gun sight right in front of him during the crash.

"Bad luck for the pilot - looks like he almost made it!" The other boy whispered in his ear.

"What is it? DH-4?"

"No." He said expertly. "RE-8, built by the Royal Aircraft Factory." His older brother had talked extensively to him when on leave, and he had memorized all of the enemy aircraft to impress him.

"Artillery spotter  and photo recon-" He took the clock off its holder on the instrument panel, and pocketed it.

"Lets get back." They all turned- 

"NOW! BLAST THEM BOYS!!" The Scottish voice rang loud in the night.

Suddenly the air was full of lead.

He dove for the mud and rolled under the fuselage to get away from the fire. Inspiration struck - he jumped up onto the fuselage on the other side of the plane and scrambled up to the rear cockpit. Swinging the twin Lewis machine guns in the direction of the fire he sent up a quick prayer.

_Hope they still work._

He fired a long burst, stopping only when the drums emptied, then  total quiet.

"Go back to the trenches! Before more show up!" He quickly jumped down and left the aircraft.

Looking back, he realized that the other three did not move. At that point he knew they were not going to get up  ever.

He swallowed hard and turned away. He was numb, too much for one day. He had to get back, to report. It was his duty. He had let it slip for a moment, but no longer.

He crawled from one shell-hole to another, quietly listening for pursuit and hearing none. Taking no chances, he stealthily returned to their trenches.

He fell back into the trench, out of breath with exertion.

"It is quiet over there."

The sergeant nodded. "We heard firing."

"Yes  we were ambushed, but I managed to kill our assailants. The others were not so fortunate." He looked away, somewhat guiltily.

"Too bad your heroism was wasted, we got the call just after you left - we are surrendering at 11:00 tomorrow morning."

The sergeant thought for a second, then looked at him thoughtfully. 

"Your headmaster must have known that."

"Why?" The boy asked, curious.

"Because he was obviously in a hurry to get you here. I wonder why?" He looked again at the boys face, noted the extreme youth.

He nodded in recognition before answering his own question. "Now he can say his whole school entered the war and fought with distinction." His voice got harder and colder as he went on. "He expects that will aid his schools reputation after the war and help line his pockets with deutschmarks!" He finished disgustedly.

The boy thought for a second. "I thought he had a hunch about an attack..." He said, trying to keep down the rising sense of betrayal.

"So did the lieutenant - that's why you four were sent out there tonight." The sergeant hesitated, then added: "That headmasters greed cost twenty-one lives for no reason." Their eyes met.

"I know. And I will not forget." The boy said quietly, in a voice which gave the Sergeant chills.

He got up silently and went to his billet. He thought for a long time before going to sleep, planning and plotting his next moves. He finally fell into an exhausted slumber, the voices of his fallen comrades echoing in his dreams.

* * *

He was nudged awake the next morning.

"You have a call." He followed the sergeant to HQ.

"Its your headmaster." The boy and the sergeant looked at each other. The boy rolled his eyes. The sergeant smirked and stayed to listen. 

"You have done very well-" The headmaster started. 

Did you know the war was ending?" The boy interrupted with steel in his voice.

"Uh, yes, had a relative on the negotiating team - but thats not your concern-"

The boy pressed. "Do you know-" he couldn't quite keep the sarcasm and hatred out of his voice. "That twenty-one of your students are dead?"

"Too bad - uh - fortunes of war..." The man stumbled, trying to regain control of the conversation, a control that inexplicably seemed to have left him.

"Will they let you keep your school after this? A Military Academy?"

"Who?" The headmaster was not prepared for the questions. This was not going the way he had planned it. The boy should have been grateful to have survived, not coldly questioning him as to his motives. He began to sweat, just a little.

"Our new masters! Or - have you forgotten that we lost, Colonel?" Bitter steel filled his voice.

"Thats being taken care of. The school is moving to Switzerland. And you are going to be awarded the Iron Cross! Congratulations!"

The attempt at distraction just fueled the fire. 

"Iron Cross?!" It was the boys turn to snicker. "For what? Being here for one day? Almost dying on multiple occasions - for nothing? What, Colonel, your school buy that for advertising too?" The coldness and tempered rage that filled his voice belonged to a man much older than his tender years.

"Listen, boy!" The headmaster lost his patience. 

"Do you know who you are dealing with? I have connections. I know people-"

The boy interrupted. "You know-" He said mildly, laughing just a little. He would be willing to bet that even at his age, he could match the colonel connection for connection and then some. He continued, the emotionlessness of his voice all the more chilling after his previous fury. "I would be willing to bet there are some recently unemployed soldiers who would be willing to work for me and do something about those people, those connections - and you!"

He knew that his words were incautious, but he was too tired, cold, hungry, dirty, angry, and disgusted to care. This man was responsible for the deaths of twenty-one of his friends and neighbors, for nothing more than personal gain.

That was an insult that he would not easily overlook. The boys eyes locked with the sergeants. The sergeant smiled grimly and half-bowed his assent to him.

"Wait until your family finds out about your behavior-" The headmaster blustered, trying in vain to regain his authority. 

"You forget yourself, Headmaster. I am the oldest surviving male in my family - now they will do as they are told. As will you, if you know what is good for you. My family always was a large investor in the school you work for, as were the families of the boys you murdered. Imagine what those families would say, if they were to learn of what you have done here."

At the mans agitated blustering, he continued, voice as cold as the air around him. "If you want my silence, be assured that you will pay, and pay dearly, for the privilege."

The boy stopped for effect, and this time the headmaster stayed respectfully silent. "I believe you agree that I have just graduated with honors?"

At the stammered assent, he hung up.

He took out the clock that he had confiscated last night from the RE-8. It needs a chain, he thought. It read 10:59.

The boy contemplated his next move. Yes, a change of name - a little less German sounding - better for business.

First names fine, thanks to Mother, cut off the German part though. Lets see, IRON, Kenneth IRON, no - not quite - KENNETH IRONS - yes, that is perfect.

November 11th, 1918 - 11:00 AM. Kenneth Irons emerged from the trench and started walking over No Mans Land.

Time to begin, he thought as he went to shake their hands.


End file.
